Friday Night
by David J. Warner
Summary: Act II of "The Bucktown Timeline": A night in the life of Generation X.


FRIDAY NIGHT 

A Generation X Prelude 

written by David J. Warner 

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This story (C) Copyright 1995 David J. Warner. All X-Men and Generation X characters used within this story are the intellectual property of the Marvel Comics Company. All rights reserved. 

This manuscript is freely distributable via print or electronic means. Sale for profit of this story without the expressed written consent of David J. Warner and the Marvel Comics Company is strictly prohibited. 

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PART ONE - THE INSIDE 

Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. The boys' dorm. About 10:00 p.m. 

"Yes yes, y'all. And ya don't stop..." 

When Rayquan Morris, known to his friends as Perkolater because of his constant consumption of coffee, enrolled in the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, he received a gift from his friends and former teammates in the Reclamation Squad -- Jesse "Sleepy" Aaronsen's turntables and amplifying mixer. Sleepy told him to keep them warm until he returned home. 

Suffice to say, they've been very warm nearly every night of the week, as the sounds of thumping bass and rhythmically-scratched records spill out of the boys' dorm and into the night air. 

"Don't you have any G-Funk in those crates, amigo?", asks Angelo Espinosa, who sits back in the boys' dorm lounge listening Rayquan's impromptu performance. 

"Nah, Sleepy never kept none of that around," replies Rayquan. "Nobody requests that shit in Bucktown. I got some Freestyle Fellowship here, though -- they're West Coast." 

"I think I'll pass on them," says Angelo. 

"You've gotten pretty smooth on those tables, Perk," says Everett Thomas. 

"It's in the blood, Ock," replies Rayquan. "I'm hip-hop till the end." 

"Charming. If only you could keep that sentiment to yourself." 

Rayquan starts to shake his head at Emma Frost's psionic message. "C'mon, Ms. Frost," he says, "you all the way on the other side of campus." 

"My point exactly," she replies. "Now turn it down." 

Rayquan shrugs and turns the volume down a couple of notches on his mixer. "Man, she's..." 

"Don't even think it." 

"True indeed, Perk," says Skin. "Ya don't mess with the White Queen." 

"I guess not," says Rayquan as he looks through the crates below the table and pulls out a couple of new records to add to the mix. "Yo, Skin, how 'bout some Hieroglyphics?", he says, holding up a record by Casual. 

"I guess I could dig that," replies Angelo. 

"Yo, man, dig THIS." 

Rayquan eases an instrumental of the Casual record into the mix, then throws another record on the second turntable. The sound of an ordinary sinewave blends with the record. Rayquan immediately tunes the elongated beep with the slide pitch, then begins to manipulate the record and the mixer until an ordinary wave becomes a rhythm instrument of its own, cutting in and out with the music. A few more pitch adjustments, and Rayquan begins to switch the speed of the record from 33 to 45, creating a two-note melody to compliment the driving bass of the music. 

"DJ Premier," says Everett. "He did that on Gangstarr's second album." 

"Good ear, Ev," says Rayquan, cutting off the sinewave record until it slows to nothing, then with a flourish, spinning the Casual record quickly in the opposite direction. "But can Premier do this?" 

He stops the Casual record, moves it back and forth four times and starts it again at the beginning of the instrumental. He immediately grabs a can of root beer, opens it up and guzzles it down. Upon letting out a loud belch, he begins to assert his caffeine-powered mutant ability to slow the passage of time around him while he continues to move at normal speed. 

To Rayquan, the records he scratches slow to about three fifths of their normal speed. As the music plays, he begins to manipulate the sinewave record, along with a fader on the mixer, and the speed buttons and slide pitch on the record player, until he makes a slow song out of the records. 

To Everett and Angelo, however, Rayquan's moves are a blur, as he turns an ordinary beep into a hip-hop mix of Peter Gunn. 

"Skills," says Everett, pointing at Rayquan. 

"Skills," nods Angelo in agreement. 

"'ALLO!" 

Mondo's entrances are almost always as big and friendly as he is. Having only been outside his native Tokelau for about a month, he is still adjusting to the ways of Western civilization. One thing he can never be faulted for, however, is trying. 

"I was listening to your music upstairs," says Mondo, holding up a large set of bongo drums in one hand and a stool in the other, "and I was wondering if I could join in the celebration." 

Angelo rubs his chin and shakes his head. "That's nice, amigo," he says, "but there's not a whole lot of room in hip-hop for giant bongos." 

"Hold up, Ange," says Rayquan. "If I know one thing about hip- hop, it's that there's room for just about anything. Yo, Mondo, set those babies up over here. Let's try something out." 

"Whatever you say, my friend," says Mondo as he gently sets the drums next to the speakers on Rayquan's left, then puts the stool behind them and takes a seat. Almost immediately, he launches into a fast and furious pounding that it seems only he can keep up with. 

"Hold up, kid," says Rayquan, grabbing Mondo by the shoulder. Mondo stops in mid-pound. "Ya got some skills on those drums, but ya gotta slow it down a bit. Make it something for the head-noddas, ya know? Gimme a little something like...boom, bu-CHUK, bu-boom chuk bu-bu-CHUK..." 

As Rayquan speaks out a rhythm, Mondo follows and begins to pound out a similar rhythm on his drums, this time slower and more steady. 

"That's it, homie," says Rayquan as he nods his head to the beat. "You got it now. Now lemme throw something on top of that." 

Again, he uses his mutant power to slow down time around him and quickly flips through the crates until he finds just the right record -- this time it's an R&B singer named Monica. Rayquan grins as he puts the album on the record player, then as he measures out the tempo of Mondo's bongo beat, he begins to scratch an acapella vocal to compliment the rhythm. 

"It's just...just...just one o' them days." 

Little by little, both Rayquan and Mondo loosen up and begin to play off of each other, creating a sound that eventually gets both Everett and Angelo nodding and hollering for more. 

"Yo, we've got to bring the girls over for this," says Everett. 

"I'm sure they'll be plenty amused." 

Emma Frost's telepathic jab quickly brings the mood, and the music, to a halt. 

"Everything okay, sir?", asks Angelo. 

"Oh, everything would be just peachy," she replies, "if only I could get that incessant thumping to cease. Some countries have LAWS about being this loud this late, you know." 

"But this ain't all THAT late for a Friday night," says Rayquan. 

"Don't start with me, boy," Emma says. "Turn it down now, or it's lights out. Understood?" 

Mondo sighs. "Yes, ma'am." 

Skin looks at Everett. "Madden?" 

Everett looks at Rayquan. "Madden?" 

Rayquan shrugs. "Madden." 

"What is Madden?", says Mondo. 

"I'll show ya, homie," says Rayquan. "They ever play football were you from?" 

"I think I saw a game of football a couple of weeks ago," Mondo says. "I still don't quite get it all, though. The game seems rather violent for my tastes." 

Everett grins. "Perkolater teaching Mondo all about football," he says. "THAT should be fun to watch." 

"Since when did Emma Frost start saying 'peachy'?", mutters Angelo. 

--- 

The girls' dorm (sort of). About 10:15 p.m. 

He walks through the dark hallway like a misplaced shadow, his body wrapped tightly to conceal the scars of being a mutant. Jonothan Starsmore's real scars, however, run much deeper. As a young man whose chest is a chamber of pure psionic energy, he has lost the ability to eat, to drink, to smile, even to breathe. He lives only because his mind unconsciously wills the unstable power surrounding his heart to keep him alive. At times, this mutant power of his can be a blessing. 

From the bottom of the door glows a small line of light. Jono knocks on the door, and a few seconds later adjusts his eyes to the light emerging from the now open room. He sees Paige Guthrie standing at the door, apparently wearing nothing more than an oversized T-shirt reaching down to her knees with the words "Property of Kentucky Basketball XXXL" emblazoned on the front. 

Other times, this power can be a curse. 

"What took you so long?", she says, a devilish grin creeping across her face. 

Jonothan slowly walks in the door and closes it behind him, the black bands still covering him from his nose to his waist. Paige slowly walks up to him until his back leans against the door, and she slowly takes his jacket off his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. She gently puts her hands around the sides of his head and leans her face to his, slowly and soothingly kissing his cheek, his nose, his forehead, his closed eyelids... 

"Sorry, gel," he says, grabbing her wrists and gently pulling them away, "but I just can't do this." 

Paige watches dejectedly as he walks to Paige's bed and sits there, his head bowed in shame. "Jono," she says, trying to console him, "why ya gotta be like this?" 

"Just look at us, Paige," he says. "Yer doin' all the work 'ere. I can't kiss you, or breathe on yer neck, or nibble at yer ear. I'm bloody afraid to get any closer to you, les' I blow up another buildin'." 

"Those things don't matter to me, Jono," Paige says, sitting down next to him on the bed and hugging him from behind. "You do. The fact that we're together is enough for me." 

"But will it always be enough?", says Jono. "Wot'll 'appen if someone else comes along and catches yer eye? Someone who kin do all those t'ings I couldn'? Wot then?" 

She runs her hands through his tousled hair and whispers in his ear, "Ah'll just tell him Ah'm unavailable." He looks over his shoulder and sees her smiling at him. "Now will you hush up and hold me?", she says. 

He turns to wrap his arms around her, and she pulls him backward until they fall side by side on the mattress. "One day," Paige says as she plays with Jono's hair, "we'll have total control over our mutant powers, and we'll be able to do things together that'll make the whole world jealous. And we won't have to worry about what we can't do because of our powers. Don't think about what we can't do -- think about what we could do." 

Jono can't help but crumble at the sincerity he sees as he gazes into Paige's eyes. "Yer takin' an awful big chance on me, gel," he says. 

"I love you, Jonothan Starsmore," Paige replies. "Deal with it." 

She pulls him closer toward her and hugs him as tightly as she can. 

--- 

Jubilee Lee looks through the refrigerator in the kitchen for anything to help her forget today ever happened. The Nine Inch Nails disc in her portable CD player blares through her headphones so forcefully that it could be heard all throughout the room and the nearby lounge. 

"Crap, crap, crap," she says to herself. "There's nothing good in here. And me too young to drive anywhere." She slams the fridge door. "Thirteen sucks." 

She walks out of the kitchen into the lounge, where Monet St. Croix sits in front of a computer, lost in thought. 

"No chance you'll fly me to the store for a Ben & Jerry's run, huh, M?" 

Monet doesn't respond. Her eyes remain glued to the screen. 

"Didn't think so." 

Jubilee walks across the foyer and out the front door of the makeshift residence hall. This side of campus is extremely well-lit for a school with so few students, yet the once and future X-Man would prefer the cover of darkness tonight. 

"This is just all wrong," she thinks. "Everyone in Cali is gone, and the X-Men are off doing their own thing. Man, I should be there now. How come I have to go to some side school with this early- to-bed, shed-like-a-dog hayseed for a roommate and some perfect little princess living so close by? Not to mention I barely know anything about my best friend on this campus, except that she can't talk, she likes apples, and she has razor sharp skin. 

"When did it become like this? Why did it have to change? What was wrong with how it was? What was wrong with hanging out with the X- Men? I liked some of those guys. 

"And Wolvie..." 

She feels a scream begin to build up within her, when a sudden spark shorts out the CD player in her hand. A furious toss against a tree shatters the small machine, and she looks upon the wreckage, only to find several crab apples on the ground around the tree. One by one, she inspects them, until she holds three firm ones in her hand. She puts them in her pocket and finds several more. 

Jubilee sighs as she looks at them. Then, one by one, the apples fly into the air, landing in her hands as if they were magnetically drawn to them. She flawlessly executes one juggling maneuver after another -- an apple under her leg, one thrown high in the air while she spins on the ground, an apple behind her back and over her head -- with incredible ease. 

Then, as one apple flies high into the air, she lets off a series of pyrotechnic pafs from her finger toward the apple, until the fruit explodes in mid-air. Without a hitch, she pulls another apple from her yellow jacket and keeps on juggling. She does the same thing again, this time spinning around as the apple is blown out of the sky. She spins again, the sparks flying from the back of her hand, leaving a halo of pyrotechnics around her waist. Eventually, the sparks fly from her hands as she juggles regularly, and she pulls off stunt after stunt until finally, she throws her last three apples into the air and explodes them all in a brilliant display of fireworks. 

Jubilee stands with her arms folded above the tiny pieces of fruit left on the sidewalk, a proud smile stretched across her face. The clapping she hears behind her takes her surprise. 

"Bravo, my friend," says Mondo, a large brown parka draping his Hawaiian-print shirt and shorts. 

"Jeez, Mondo, why don't ya just sneak up on me or somethin'?", she says. 

"My apologies, Jubilee," Mondo replies, "but you put on such a wonderful performance, I had to applaud you." 

"Eh, it ain't nothin'," she says, looking at her fingernails nonchalantly. "Just a few things I learned in Cali a while back." 

"You learned them well," says Mondo. "You seem very comfortable when you perform. I imagine it helps you relax after those rough days like today." 

Jubilee's smile fades slowly, and she turns and begins walking away. Mondo walks toward her until the two are walking side by side. 

"Care to talk about it?", says Mondo. 

"Yeah," says a suddenly depressed Jubilee. "It's my old pal Wolverine. I just totally miss him right now. I can't help thinking about all those times we hung out together -- the Hand, the Brood, Magneto -- hell, even when the Shadow King made that move on all of us, he was comforting me after it was over..." 

"Sort of like a father, then," says Mondo. 

"Yeah," replies Jubilee introspectively. "Sort of like a father." 

"Do you remember much about your parents?" says Mondo. 

"Not really," replies Jubilee. "All I remember was being shuttled from one foster home to another, usually ending up back on the streets again. Then came the Hand, then came Gateway, then came the X- Men, then came...well, then came this. Sometimes I think I'd have been better off staying with the X-Men." 

"Are we that bad, my friend?" 

"I never said THAT. Just that it's been...well, it hasn't been easy." 

"But it can be," Mondo says as he drapes one arm around her while waving the other forward. "Life is very easy. We just have to learn not to make it hard. Remember that, and the world will be your oyster." 

She rolls her eyes to look at him, thinking about how naive he is, how he hasn't been through all the things she has. Yet she can't stop the smile from inching across her face. 

"You've gotta stop sayin' all the right things, Mondo," she says. "You might just cheer me up or somethin'." 

"Well, that's the idea," he replies. 

So she keeps walking with him. Friends, teammates, fellow travelers in some strange, almost surreal world. Where the odyssey leads is still a mystery, but they'll be all the better just for being there together. 

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PART TWO - THE OUTSIDE 

Headmaster's quarters, about 10:25 p.m. 

Emma Frost, Headmistress of the Xavier School, can't sleep, so she figures she might as well do something useful with her time. 

"So what have we learned about him?", she says to Sean Cassidy, the Headmaster of the school, as she sits with her legs crossed opposite his desk. 

"I've got a list of things right here," replies Sean Cassidy as he sifts through some papers on his desk and eventually opens a folder marked MANCHILD. 

"He's got his mother's power to siphon memories and powers from others with but a touch," he begins, "but he does nae siphon life energy like his mother does...er, did." 

"Whatever," says Emma. "Go on." 

"He's got some of his father's magnetic powers, but nae nearly as much, and the lad has occasion to pass out when he uses them. Top o' that, he kin fly, he's surprisingly agile fer his size, he's got strength that rivals Monet herself --" 

"Humph," says Emma. 

"What 'Humph'?", replies Sean. 

"I don't know," says Emma. "It's just that the boy was five years old but a week ago, and now he's Monet St. Croix's boyfriend? Plus he's got this power that lets him take other people's memories and powers with skin-to-skin contact, and he's been seen making out with Monet all over campus. Don't you think it just seems a bit...curious?" 

"Nae a bit more curious than what ye spotted in me own head, woman," retorts Sean as he looks down at the folder. 

Emma stomps her foot and stands up, pointing an angry finger at Sean. "Dammit, Irish," she shouts, "don't you start with me. If you didn't have me to anchor your psyche after Omega Red got to you, you wouldn't even be here right now." 

"And I've nae once been ungrateful about it," Sean shouts back, "All I'm sayin' is that ye got little right t'be flailin' away at one o' the honest-t'goodness couples on this campus." 

"Couple?", says Emma, "the boy is FIVE YEARS OLD! He's been on this particular version of Earth for what, three weeks? Not to mention he still believes his father is the most righteous man in this universe or any other." 

"An' maybe on that other world he was!", yells Sean. "How are we t'know except from Bishop's second-hand account?" 

"Better yet, Banshee," Emma says, "how are you going to explain to the anomaly that is Charles Xavier Lehnscherr how his father became the ultimate threat to humankind -- and how you did nothing to stop it?" 

Emma turns away as if to begin walking out of the room. 

"Had I known, woman-" 

She turns back at him furiously. "EMMA! And how could you not have known? Some mystery man with incredible power tells you a race war is coming, and all you can think about is some serial killer?" 

"Ye make it sound like I was chasin' bleatin' Big Bird or somethin'," retorts Sean. 

"Compared to Magneto," says Emma, turning his back to him again, "he probably was." 

Sean runs his hand through his hair in frustration. Sure, Emma Frost saved his life. Were the roles reversed, he would have done the same. So why does he now feel so... violated? Is it because she walked into a part of his life that he never gave her permission to see? Was it really necessary for her to know those things to save his life? Will the two of them ever be the same now that he has so few secrets from her? 

"Are ye finished?", says Sean. 

"Yes," replies Emma. 

"Good." 

"Good." 

"Fine." 

"Fine. Forge called yesterday," she continues, her back still facing Sean. "It'll be a few weeks before he has time to fix the translation device Penance broke." 

As she begins her dramatic exit from the room, Banshee's toned- down voice stops her. "Emma?" She stops quickly, then slowly glances over her shoulder at him, revealing only a vague profile of her face to him. "What?" 

"I'm sorry," he replies, exhaling. 

Emma leans further over her shoulder and turns her eyes toward him, failing to hide the thin smile on her face. "It's okay, Sean," she says warmly. "Whenever you want to talk about it, you know where to find me." With that, she walks slowly back to her bedroom. 

--- 

As Jubilee and Mondo walk across campus together, a light in the distance grabs their attention. 

"Someone's in the grotto," says Mondo. 

"Wanna check it out?", says Jubilee. 

"Why not?", Mondo says. "It should be warmer in there than it is out here." 

They jog over to the biosphere and walk up to the control room, where they look down upon the giant terrarium and its inhabitants. 

"You mean he can play GUITAR, too?", says Jubilee. "Is this guy full of surprises or what?" 

"Let's go in and say 'allo," says Mondo, and they walk out of the control room and into the grotto itself. 

Aside from being the place where the students of the new Xavier School hone their mutant powers, this ecologically-balanced biosphere -- or the "Danger Grotto," as the kids like to call it -- also serves as the home for several of the young, displaced mutants whose appearance often prevents them from living normal lives. 

Artie Maddicks' enlarged cranium and oversized pupils suddenly appeared on his 11th birthday, while his ability to talk like a normal child disappeared. His father spent the rest of his life trying to "save" his son and make him a normal boy again. When Artie watched in his mind as his father was killed, he thought his world had ended. He is hoping to start over yet again with the Generation X group, where he continues to learn about his power to communicate through psionic holograms. 

This time, however, Artie has his best friend Leech with him. The young, green-skinned power-dampener watched as his old family and friends, the Morlocks, were slaughtered in the tunnels below New York City. His new friends at the Xavier School, however, have made him feel more than welcome, and having his best friend from the early days of X- Factor has been a big help. 

The mysterious girl to Artie and Leech's left is Penance. Her skin is drawn within her so tightly that it is harder than diamonds and sharper than steel blades. Her ordeal with the mutant called Emplate drained her of most of her strength and nearly all of her confidence. Only now has she been able to emerge from her shell and attempt to communicate with the other students, though a language barrier still exists between them. 

The young man with the guitar to whom Artie, Leech and Penance listen attentively, however, isn't displaced by his appearance. In fact, were he on any other high school campus, he might be mistaken for a star athlete, or the heartthrob of every girl in the school. 

But Charles Xavier Lehnscherr, the extraordinary mutant now called Manchild, is perhaps the most displaced student on campus. He came from a world where Apocalypse ruled and his parents, Magneto and Rogue, led the X-Men in the fight for justice and human-mutant equality. The boy himself was named for the man who sacrificed his life to save a young Magneto two decades earlier -- an event which in reality never happened. 

Only two and a half years old, he watched his world end in a nuclear holocaust, but not before his half-brother Quicksilver snatched him from his parents' arms at the last possible second and threw him into the M'Kraan Crystal in the hope of saving his life. When he emerged from that cataclysm, he found himself on 125th Street in Harlem, right in front of the world-famous Apollo Theater, twice as old as he was before, and unsure of who he was or why he was there. 

A woman named Monica took him in and cared for him, and before he knew it, he found himself in the middle of another mutant adventure, this time with a group of inner-city defenders named the Reclamation Squad. The adventure ended with Charles transformed by Mr. Sinister into a powerful teenager with a myriad of mutant powers. Only with the help of his new teachers at the Xavier School and a young woman named Monet St. Croix, who rescued him once from Sinister's henchmen before his transformation and then from himself afterwards, has he been able to gain control over his arsenal of abilities, which seems to grow every day. 

Until now, however, nobody knew of Charles's musical talents -- including Charles himself. 

"Where did you get the strings, my friend?", asks Mondo as Charles continues playing. 

"Monet bought them for me," Charles replies. "More than one person plays the piano around here, but nobody plays the guitar, so I thought it would be nice if I could learn it. That way I could play music with others here on campus." 

"Learned it awful quick, didn't you?", says Jubilee. 

"To be honest, I'm not sure where I got it from," says Charles. "I mean, I've always enjoyed music, but I never knew I could actually PLAY anything like this." 

Artie turns to Jubilee and Mondo and displays a psionic hologram of Charles and Monet kissing each other while lying on top of the baby grand piano in Worthington Hall. Charles blushes at Jubilee's grin. "What's she doin' to ya, Charlie?", she says slyly. 

"I guess Monet has inadvertently taught me a few things about music this week," Charles replies, "but Monet only likes classical music, and while I have an appreciation for it, I'd like to listen to other kinds of music as well. Banshee's let me borrow some CDs from his collection, so I've had plenty to work with." 

"What's the deal with you and Monet, anyway?", says Jubilee. "I mean, yeah, she rescued you a couple of times and all -- and I'll admit she's done that for me, too -- but of all people, why her?" 

Charles continues strumming the guitar as he thinks for a moment about Monet and all the time they have spent together. "You guys really don't know a whole lot about her, do you?", he says. 

"Not really," says Jubilee, "'cept that she's got her nose so high in the air that somethin' could fly in it." 

"Jubilee, there is so much more to Monet than you could ever imagine," says Charles. "You could never see it just by looking at her, because of the way she acts around others. She's really very playful." 

Jubilee's jaw drops as she kneels down next to Penance. "Playful?", says Jubilee, "Are we talking about the same Monet St. Croix here?" 

"Monet probably would never tell you, but that's just part of who she is," Charles says. "She has so many...levels, I guess is the right word. If you were to see her as she really was, I don't think you could fully understand it. I'm not sure I do, to be honest." 

"Well, if she's got all these 'levels' to her, how come we don't get to see them?", asks Jubilee. 

"Mostly because of her background, I guess," he replies. "She's always been taught to act proper and mature around others, and she acts that way out of habit now. She missed a lot of her childhood because of her upbringing. Maybe that's why she likes me. After all, I *am* only five years old." 

"It's wonderful to be young and in love, isn't it?", says Mondo. 

"Well, having never been there before, I really don't know," says Charles, "but I can't say I'm not enjoying it." 

As Mondo and Charles chat, Jubilee looks over at Penance, who sits almost in a trance as she listens intently to Charles' guitar. 

"Hey, Charlie," says Jubilee, "can you play any cool tunes on that thing or what?" 

"Well, Banshee asked me if I could learn this song he really liked," says Charles. "I've been working on it a little bit the last couple of days. Tell me what you think." 

As Charles begins playing and singing, both Jubilee and Mondo recognize the song immediately -- "One," by U2. Mondo enjoys the song, wondering why his teacher likes it so much, but Jubilee doesn't have to wonder. "One" was the first dance of Scott Summers and Jean Grey as husband and wife. She remembers how Banshee nearly broke down crying as he watched them. It was all too clear that he was thinking about Moira MacTaggart. And now she has the Legacy Virus. It's amazing how life can take the people you love away from you so quickly. 

Then she looks at her friend sitting next to her. Penance's arms hug her folded legs, her chin rests on her knees, and her eyes are transfixed on Charles and his music. Life almost took her away before I even knew anything about her, Jubilee thinks to herself. I can't let that happen again. Forge better fix that translator quick. 

Jubilee puts her hand on Penance's shoulder. The red-skinned girl looks back and sees Jubilee's warm smile, and she smiles back. She raises her hand to hold Jubilee's, but a glance at her fingers gives her pause. 

"It's okay, Penny," says Jubilee. "I know what you're trying to say." 

So they smile at each other, then sit back and enjoy the rest of the music. I want to hear your story one day, Penance, Jubilee thinks. Just let me have the chance. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

PRELUDE 

"Xavier..." 

The tall, long-haired, muscular figure looks upon a photocopy of an old Time Magazine cover, featuring Charles Xavier sitting in a wheelchair, a face looking both intelligent and imposing. 

"Perhaps I should not chase you like this. You were not the butcher that destroyed my lord's home, nor siphoned much of my power away in the process. But you are indeed the man that destroyed my lord's dream, and for that you shall pay." 

He puts the picture down on a platform next to him, where the sedated figure of another man rests. 

"It will not be your blood for the spilling, however. Instead, I shall crush the future of your mission, bit by bit, by destroying the next generation of X-Men...." 

His eyes wander from the picture of Xavier to the picture upon the sedated man's face, focusing closely on the scars around his cybernetic eye. 

"...and their teacher. Your allegiance with Xavier has cost you and your students their lives, John Lynch. I shall relish being the collector." 

--- 

We won't tell this guy he goofed. He'll find out for himself in: 

DOUBLE-TEAM 

The Generation X/Gen-13 crossover. 

Another full-of-surprises fan-fiction story by David J. Warner...and yes, Perkolater and Manchild will be there. 


End file.
